Asus TUF Gaming FX705DY Review

Asus has been really active in the laptop space this year. It has been announcing new machines in different segments ranging from affordable to Ultrabooks and high-end gaming ROG laptops. More recently, it tried to strike the balance of affordability and gaming with two AMD Ryzen 5-powered mid-range gaming laptops. These two new laptops are 15-inch FX505DY and 17-inch FX705DY priced at Rs 59,990 and Rs 69,990 respectively.

What’s the difference between FX505DY and FX705DY you may ask? Well, apart from the screen size and battery, these two are almost the same. They house same innards and support up to 32GB DDR4-2666 RAM, up to 128GB NVMe SSD and up to 1TB FireCuda SSHD. Recently Asus India shared the 17-inch TUF Gaming Laptop FX705DY, and we have shared our opinion on the laptop in the review that follows.

Asus TUF Gaming FX705DY Review: Design and Build

Asus has kept the design very much in line with last year’s Intel-powered FX504 laptop. It primarily has all plastic body but sports a rugged look. Asus prefers to call it “Radiating-X” design. The top cover has a stealthy black colored with a brushed metallic finish and sharp diagonal lines rating outward from the ASUS logo in bright red color at the center. The use of red as contrast can also be noticed in a lining that runs all around the laptop body.

Once you lift the lid, you will be looking at a 15.6-inch matte-finish screen with narrow bezels on right and left sides. Then there’s the keyboard, which has black keys with red backlight. All the space around the keyboard also gets brushed metal finish.

The thing that bothers me with this gaming laptop is the flex in the bottom half of the display. Apart from that, the rest of the laptop feels really stiff and solid. There’s also military-grade MIL-STD-810G durability certification for more assurance.

Asus TUF Gaming FX705DY weighs 2.7kg which means it’s nowhere close to being a portable machine but the heft is still reasonable for a gaming laptop.

Asus TUF Gaming FX705DY Review: Display

Asus TUF Gaming laptops in the past have had remarkable screens and the trend continues with the FX705DY. The 17.3-inch Full HD IPS LCD screen which has a standard 60Hz refresh rate. Even though it is doesn’t have that 120Hz, or higher refresh rate screen that we usually see on fancy gaming laptops, the display won’t disappoint you.

Colors are a bit washed out, though. The anti-glare coating is really helpful, especially with extended gaming sessions. The maximum brightness is about average here.

Asus TUF Gaming FX705DY Review: Performance

Asus FX705DY gets the same processing unit as its 15-inch sibling. It packs AMD Ryzen 5-3550H processor clocked at 2.1GHz. As a default option, it comes with 8GB DDR4 RAM at 2,400MHz. It has two RAM slots that can be used for additional 32GB. On the GPU front, the Vega 8 graphics is part of default setup while ASUS has added a dedicated AMD RADEON RX 560X GPU as well. The RX 560X GPU is often said to be at par with Nvidia’s GTX 1050, but our experience says otherwise.

For this review, we put this laptop through a few benchmark test. On Geekbench Asus TUF Gaming FX705DY scored 3,712 in the single-core test and 10,821 in the multi-core test – which is decent enough for a budget gaming laptop. On PCMark 10 test it manages to score 3,298.

Coming to the practical gaming experience, we played multiple games like PUBG, FIFA 18, Far Cry 5, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and the laptop managed to handle these without much trouble.

It managed to deliver the best results when the resolution was set to HD with Medium graphics settings. While in PUGB it manages to touch up to 50FPS, in Far Cary 5 we hovered around 42-45FPS. CSGO was much smoother and could cross 60FPS at medium settings. so thumbs up for that.

One thing that Asus has done exceedingly well, is ensuring that the laptop remains cool even under stress. It has dual internal cooling fans that keep the temperature under check.

Asus TUF Gaming FX705DY Review: I/O and Ports

Asus has pretty much covered everything here. The FX705DY laptop has a USB2.0 Type-A port, two USB 3.1 Type-A ports, an RJ45 Ethernet port which will come handy during troubled wireless connection.

It also has an HDMI 2.0 port and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Had Asus added a USB Type-C it would have made the laptop more future proof. The FX505DY comes with WiFi 802.11ac support (2.4GHz and 5GHz) and Bluetooth 4.2.

Asus TUF Gaming FX705DY Review: Keyboard and Trackpad

Moving on to other essentials, Asus TUF Gaming FX705DY has a full-size keyboard including a number pad. The keys have 1.8mm travel and have been tested to last for up to 20 million keystrokes. The space bar has a sight lip which looks really appealing when bright red multi-stage backlighting is turned on.

I am quite satisfied with the keyboard for both gaming and regular usage. My day to day activities involve a lot of typing and I didn’t face issues while typing article or composing and sending mail.

It has a sizable touchpad with multi-finger support red markings suggesting useable area. I found it to be a bit clicky, though. I also had issues with the precision of right and left clicks.

Asus TUF Gaming FX705DY Review: Battery

The Asus TUF Gaming FX705DY is equipped with a 4-cell 64Whr battery which delivers around 4 hours of mileage in balanced mode. The backup takes a hit while operating in the performance mode. While playing games, we could last for around 2 hours.

Asus TUF Gaming FX705DY Review Verdict: Should You Buy It?

The ASUS TUF FX705DY is one of the rare gaming laptops that are offered with a 17-inch display in this segment. The laptop offers a strictly moderate gaming experience with military-grade certified built quality. The lack of SSD storage and sub-par speakers further dent its case.

People who usually dive in moderate games and specifically require a 17-inch screen could consider this as an option.

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